Some nights, I am overwhelmed by the necessity of understanding everything there is. It is as if there is too much air to breathe and I have to catch up. But there is not just too much; there is more than I can ever breathe.

'Let's stand back a little to consider this. We will call, if you like, "philosophy" the form of thought that asks, not of course what is true and what is false, but what determines that there is and can be truth and falsehood and whether or not we can separate the true and the false. We will call "philosophy" the form of thought that asks what it is that enables the subject to have access to the truth and which attempts to determine the conditions and limits of the subject's access to the truth. If we call this "philosophy," then I think we could call "spirituality" the search, practice, and experience through which the subject carries out the necessary transformations on himself in order to have access to the truth. We will call "spirituality" then the set of these researches, practices, and experiences, which may be purifications, ascetic exercises, renunciations, conversions of looking, modifications of existence, etc., which are, not for knowledge but for the subject, for the subject's very being, the price to be paid for access to the truth. Let's say that spirituality, as it appears in the West at least, has three characteristics.

Spirituality postulates that the truth is never given to the subject by right. Spirituality postulates that the subject as such does not have right of access to the truth and is not capable of having access to the truth. It postulates that the truth is not given to the subejct by a simple act of knowledge (connaissance), which would be founded and justified simply by the fact that he is the subject and because he possesses this or that structure of subjectivity. It postulates that for the subject to have right of access to the truth he must be changed, transformed, shifted, and become, to some extent and up to a certain point, other than himself. The truth is only given to the subject at a price that brings the subject's being into play. For as he is, the subject is not capable of truth. I think that this is the simplest but most fundamental formula by which spirituality can be defined. It follows that from this point of view there can be no truth without a conversion or a transformation of the subject. This conversion, this transformation of the subject - and this will be the second major aspect of spirituality - may take place in different forms. Very roughly we can say (and this is again a very schematic survey) that this conversion may take place in the form of a movement that removes the subject from his current status and condition (either an ascending movement of the subject himself, or else a movement by which the truth comes to him and enlightens him). Again, quite conventionally, let us call this movement, in either of its directions, the movement of eros (love). Another major form through which the subject can and must transform himself in order to have access to the truth is a kind of work. This is a work of the self on the self, an elaboration of the self by the self, a progressive transformation of the self by the self for which one takes responsibility in a long labor of ascesis (askesis). Eros and askesis are, I think, the two major forms of Western spirituality for conceptualizing the modalities by which the subject must be transformed in order finally to become capable of truth. This is the second characteristic of spirituality.

Finally, spirituality postulates that once access to the truth has really been opened up, it produces effects that are, of course, the consequence of the spiritual approach taken in order to achieve this, but which at the same time are something quite different and much more: effects which I will call "rebound" ("de retour"), effects of the truth on the subject. For spirituality, the truth is not just what is given to the subject, as reward for the act of knowledge as it were, and to fulfill the act of knowledge. The truth enlightens the subject; the truth gives beatitude to the subject; the truth gives the subject tranquility of the soul. In short, in the truth and in access to the truth, there is something that fulfills the subject himself, which fulfills or transfigures his very being. In short, I think we can say that in and of itself an act of knowledge could never give access to the truth unless it was prepared, accompanied, doubled, and completed by a certain transformation of the subject; not of the individual, but of the subject himself in his being as subject.'

'In all three cases, the audience is clearly indicated. Rousseau addresses those who have entertained the attacks on him by philosophes as important as David Hume. Newman tells us that he addresses the charges of Charles Kingsley, answering anyone who believes in those charges. Adams admits that his book, privately printed under no author's name, is for a narrow circle of Americans capable of entertaining his dark views. None of these men addresses humankind in general. They have specific people in mind, and they speak directly to them. Augustine, by contrast, does not address any human person. He has an audience of one - God. The entire book is a prayer to him - a point he keeps before his (and our) mind by frequent apostrophe to "Lord" or "God" or "Lord God" or "God my Lord." His language often has the form of liturgical incantation, and the narrative is arranged according to his theological concepts. When he reflects on the fact that his prayer is being taken down by scribes (10.3-6), it is only to remark that all men's testimony to God (by word or act) is observable by others, for their own edification, disgust, or self-examination. In The Teacher 2, he notes that those who recite psalms in church are praying to God, though they are also reminding each other of God's role in their life. "My heart's fellow will love in me what you, Lord, tell us is lovable, deplore in me what you tell us is deplorable" (10.5).

It is hard to take seriously enough the nature of the book as prayer. This sets it off from autobiographies, and answers the principal objection made to it, those having to do with its structure, veracity, and unity.'

'It is a way of saying, I want you, too, to have this experience, so that we are more alike, so that we are closer, bound together, sharing a point of view - so that we are "coming from the same place."'

'There is the city, there is the country. There is the capital, there is the province. Apparently the problem in the mother country is the same. Let us take a Lyonnais in Paris: he boasts of the quiet of his city, the intoxicating beauty of the quays of the Rhône, the splendor of the plane trees, and all those other things that fascinate people who have nothing to do.'